Jay-Z’s Engineer Young Guru Talks Watch The Throne

Several weeks ago I had the privilege of interviewing Jay-Z’s engineer and DJ, Young Guru, as part of iStandard’s “Beast Of The Beats” producer showcase. On this particular night Hov and Yeezy were making their Jersey stop of the Watch The Throne tour, so I asked Guru what it was like being a fly on the wall during that tour.

He also tells new producers how they can get their beats to Jay-Z since he is working on a new album.

“The best thing I could say is wherever we went on the last album, go 180 degrees from that,” he advises. “After The Blueprint everybody was giving us all Blueprint sounding beats. Don’t listen to the last album and try to duplicate what was on it.”

In this second part he goes into how he got the name Young Guru and addresses the conflict he had with the late Keith “Guru” Elam of Gang Starr over the name.